Waking Nightmare
by Phantom Lightning
Summary: The world is ending. Monstrous abominations are escaping through cracks in reality. Time is splintering, warped around one creature, one that was never meant to be born. Who will survive the apocalypse? (In Progress, although updates may be slow at times)
1. Ending

**oh god what have i done**

**This is an AU fanfic. The characters have more going on with their lives. Danny and Sam are already dating and I gave them little backstories and personality quirks. I don't regret what I've done at the end.**

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"Danny, you should go in. I think it would really help your parents; you saw how crushed they were when they found out it didn't work." Sam Manson said to her boyfriend, Danny Fenton. She was currently trying to convince him to at least try to figure out what was wrong with his parents' failed ghost portal..

"I don't know... it looks kind of dangerous in there. And besides, if my genius scientist parents who actually figured out an alternative energy source couldn't figure out why it didn't work, what makes you think I can?" Danny said, looking at the failed Ghost Portal.

It was very dangerous, mostly because his parents hadn't bothered to clean it up. There were wires sticking out from some cracks between the plates of metal, and there were cables everywhere, some having been cut in half to make space and were now sputtering out dangerous looking sparks. The Portal itself seemed to suck in all of the light in the room, like the gaping maw of an impossibly huge monster that was just waiting for Danny to walk into its mouth of his own free will.

Danny didn't want to admit it, but it slightly freaked him out.

Not that he would ever admit it to his friends that any of the inventions that his superstitious parents made would ever scare him. His reputation was more important than his unfounded suspicions, especially after the last time he mentioned it and the invention exploded... into glow-in-the-dark lime-scented green bubbles that had covered the entire room and anybody unfortunate enough to be standing in the room. Sam and Tucker hadn't let the incident go for a week.

Really, it was his parents' faults for trying to make a ghost powered soap dispenser! Danny couldn't understand why he was made fun of for getting a bad feeling about glowing green bubbles when his dad's fault was the one who honestly, wholeheartedly thought that making a ghost-powered soap dispenser was ever a good idea.

(Danny still secretly sometimes wondered how his dad had convinced his mom into helping him build it.)

"Come on, it's at least worth a try. They only plugged it in once; maybe there's something that they missed. It's worth a try, isn't it?" Sam urged, nudging Danny towards it.

Danny sighed (he could never say no to his girlfriend) and began walking towards the portal.

"Wait!" Sam yelled, picking something out of a box.

"What is it?" Danny asked and began walking towards her.

"Here." She said, throwing a white blob at him. "Put this on."

"... You've got to be kidding me. Why?" Danny asked, eyeing the white clothing with distaste.

"Because there might be something that can hurt you in there. A little protection is better than none, right?"

Danny scowled and began putting it on, not paying attention to what he looked like. "I hope I don't look like too much of an idiot, because if this thing ends up getting fused to my skin, I don't want to have to walk around in a jumpsuit or something equally as lame. People would be staring at my ass all day... And don't even get me started on capes!" He shuddered at the mental image.

"To be honest, you look pretty good." Tucker said, looking up from his PDA for the first time in the entire conversation.

Danny looked down on himself and sighed. He was wearing a long black trench coat with bands of red and white and a long sleeved nondescript white shirt underneath. There were also plain white pants and black combat boots, and he began pulling on the black gloves that were designed to protect every square inch of skin.

"Honestly, I still don't see why I have to wear this," Danny grumbled. "It really doesn't seem like anything that will help me if the lab explodes again."

"Danny! Your parent specially designed these suits to protect against chemical burns and radiation." Sam admonished. Unfortunately, she said it the same time Tucker had decided to cut in.

"Well, if you die, at least you'll be looking cool, for one. And it also adds +3 Charisma, +2 Luck, and +1 Defense."

"... Tucker, you've been playing too many RPG's again." Danny sighed, resting his head in his palm. Why did all his friends have to have the strangest vices? Sam had her animal rights thing, Tucker had his technology and his blog full of cat gifs, and Danny had his studies in physics and astronomy.

Although, to be fair, Tucker's cat blog _was_ somewhat funny.

"I swear it was only 10 straight hours this time! You've got to admit, that's a lot better than the last three times!" Tucker said, shielding his magical bag of tech that followed him everywhere with his body, face in an expression of mock horror at the thought of Danny taking away his precious technology.

"Never mind that. I'm going in, not that it would help, anyway. But since you insist..." Danny trailed off, doing that odd little half-smile of his and gesturing toward Sam.

Just before he could actually walk through the metal frame of the ghost portal, Sam called, "Stop!" loudly, enough to make both Danny and Tucker flinch and cover their ears, Tucker more so because he was literally only about a foot away from her.

"Jeez, Sam. I think you might've busted an eardrum." Tucker said, uncovering his ears.

"Yeah, what was that about?" Danny asked, regaining his composure.

"Sorry, it's just that I realised that this would make the perfect picture. I mean, just look at you, acting like you're about to go to war with monsters from a different universe or something."

Sam, Danny, and Tucker all managed to keep a straight face for approximately 10 seconds before they all burst into laughter.

"Speaking of pictures, isn't it your one-month anniversary of dating? We really should take some pictures and put it in the scrapbook." Tucker pointed out, getting out his really high quality expensive camera that he had begged his parents for, citing it as a "recreational activity" and allowed him to get out more. It turned out that he had really enjoyed photography and had ended up becoming a member of the photography club at school.

"Sure, why not? If anything, we can laugh about it later when we look back." Danny shrugged and waved Sam over.

Danny exaggeratedly struck a pose like a superhero, and they all laughed while taking pictures, striking poses and pretending to be monsters coming out of the portal. They were just three friends, and Tucker wasn't left out, even though one of his best friends was dating the other. They all had a strong friendship, and Tucker wasn't envious in the slightest because of how perfect Danny and Sam were together. He wasn't excluded in anything, and if he was, it was only because they were doing romantic things and warned him beforehand.

It was a pretty beautiful relationship, and nothing could ruin it, not even when two of them were dating and the third couldn't even pick up a dance partner.

"Alright, I think that's enough pictures. In you go!" Tucker said, slapping Danny on the back.

"Here I go, into the portal of death!" he said, pausing for dramatic effect and exaggeratedly swaggering into the ghost portal, all fear and doubt gone. "If I don't come back, tell the fair lady Samantha Manson that I will forever love her!"

Tucker and Danny laughed as Tucker tried to hold Sam back from trying to maul Danny for calling her a fair lady, although it didn't work very well, seeing how Tucker was laughing so hard.

Then, Danny began screaming in horrible, gut wrenching agony as blood lit with green light splattered over the shining metal walls of the normally pristine lab, the lights flickering and dying, leaving only a ghostly green light to flicker over the surface of the blood of one Daniel Jack Fenton.


	2. Coda

**Well, then, here we are. Sorry about not updating for so long. Enjoy!**

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Chapter 2: Coda

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Tucker and Sam stood there in mute horror and shock. Tucker numbly wiped off a bit of blood that was on his face and tried to wrap his brain around what he had just witnessed. In the corner of his eye, he saw Sam crumple to the ground, staring blankly at the blood of her boyfriend on her hands, all traces of mirth and joyfulness gone.

What just happened?

The green light from the now-functioning ghost portal ('Well, Danny did get it to work, he thought bitterly) lit the blood splatters around the lab in an eerie green glow. There was an enormous plume of smoke just outside the portal frame that seemed to glow from within—

_Wait._

It was glowing; or rather, something inside of it was glowing.

As the smoke began to clear, Tucker saw a figure crouched on the ground clad in the unmistakable outline of a trench coat.

"Danny?!" Tucker called out, hoping that his friend was still alive, against all odds, even though they had seen him blow up in front of their eyes and his blood was still dripping down their clothes.

Then the smoke was entirely clear.

It was Danny, although he was lying in a rapidly growing puddle of his own blood and covered in heavy burns.

"MR. AND MRS. FENTON!" Tucker screamed before remembering that the lab was soundproofed because of all the explosions that happened in the lab (he had never regretted suggesting it until that moment), which was why they hadn't come running the moment Danny began screaming in pain.

Tucker ran up the stairs, praying to god that it wasn't too late for his friend. "MR. AND MRS. FENTON! Danny's in trouble! Call 911!" Tucker yelled, tears welling in his eyes.

Madeline and Jack Fenton immediately ran to the lab, guns blazing. They did not, however expect to see their son lying in a puddle of his own blood with severe burns covering his body, his girlfriend crouching over him and sobbing loudly, tears mixing with his blood. Jack reacted first, dropping his guns, running to the cluttered workbench, sweeping papers off, and slamming a button, completely shattering the protective plastic cover. Madeline ran to her son, assessing his injuries and applying emergency first-aid to Danny with practiced ease, breathing out a sigh of relief when she found a weak pulse.

Sam and Tucker simply stood there in shock, not knowing how to do anything that would actually help and not hinder the two professionals, Tucker numbly patting Sam on the back, who was sobbing into his shirt, mascara leaving dark smudges on his signature yellow shirt.

Tucker didn't know what had happened, or how he had gotten there, but he and Sam were sitting on the porch, both of their faces dry from having shed all their tears. A paramedic ran up to them, hands and front covered in blood, but with an expression of relief plastered all over his face.

"He's alive. There's a possibility he might not make it through the night, but if we get him to the hospital there's a good chance of him making it through alright. If you want, you can go see him, but I doubt you'd want to. It's not a pretty sight." The paramedic then ran back to the ambulance and the other paramedics, having delivered his message.

Tucker stood up and walked to the ambulance, Sam following. They didn't make it very far, though. Tucker stopped dead in his tracks. There was blood everywhere. It was splattered over the ground and the paramedics. Before he knew it, he was in an alleyway, throwing up the remains of whatever little breakfast he had eaten that morning. Sam was close behind him, skin about three shades lighter than usual even under the heavy layers of makeup she had on her face.

Sam collapsed into Tucker's arms, crying her eyes out for the second time that day. Tucker patted her, shedding tears of his own and allowing Sam to cry like he wanted to, but knew he couldn't because he had to be strong, if not for Danny, then for Sam.

Tucker and Sam were waiting in the hospital waiting room. They still hadn't received any news on Danny's condition, but they knew that he wasn't doing well. He had been in the intensive care unit for the last three hours, and all they knew was that he wasn't dead yet. At least, they hoped.

Tucker sighed and picked up another piece of hospital food. It had been brought in some time ago, although he didn't know when. It was cold, though, so it had to have been some time ago.

Everything seemed so surreal.

Sam had cried more in the last day than she had in the last five years. She had never shed as many tears as she had in that one day, not even when she was in third grade and broke her arm after falling from the monkey bars.

Tucker's best friend from preschool was in surgery for major blood loss, third degree burns all over his body, possible radiation poisoning, and acid burns from the corrosive ectoplasm that ate away at everything save for a few select materials.

Tucker wished that he and Sam had never even asked Danny to show them the ghost portal.

If it weren't for that damn portal, none of this would have ever happened, and at that moment, he had honestly never hated one machine more than he had at that moment.

A doctor covered in blood walked into the waiting room, interrupting his thoughts. Tucker looked at him hopefully, hoping that maybe, just maybe, Danny had survived the accident. He would come back, whine about having to be in bandages like that one time he broke his arm, and play video games together while he healed enough to be able to go to school. They would order cheap fast food and pig out until they were crouched over the toilet and wondering why they had every thought it was a good idea in the first place. Everything would go back to normal, and they wouldn't ever go back to the lab. They would just live through life and wouldn't have to—

Tucker wasn't sure what he noticed first.

Maybe it was the way the surgeon had held himself, drooping, with eyes that told the world that he had been doing his job for far too long, eyes that had seen needless bloodshed, eyes that were dull from the guilt of having innocent lives lost under his care because he wasn't good enough or because of some stupid oversight that someone had made.

Maybe it was the amount of blood that was splattered on him. Danny had lost an awful lot of blood in the lab already; there was no possible way someone could lose that much blood. Humans only had so much blood to spare, and last time Tucker checked, they usually couldn't survive losing almost a gallon of it without dying.

Or perhaps it was the fact that he was saying something about dying of blood loss and the time of death, although the words didn't seem to be penetrating through the cloudy haze that seemed to settle over the world.

Tucker briefly noticed Sam sobbing quietly, hiccuping, although her face was dry, from all the tears she had already shed. Some part of his mind noted that tears were running down his own face and that the doctor had left, gone to let the friends mourn and to talk to the parents and any relatives.

Danny was dead.

**Danny** was _dead_.

It was such a shock to Tucker's mind that he briefly thought that it was all some horrible, horrible nightmare, but the pain was too real, too sharp. It felt sharp and dull and burning all at the same time, like that deep seated ache where you would wait for it to spike, but it never did. Tucker

Tucker let his mind fall into the cloudy abyss, and from what seemed like miles away, he heard the wailing and sobbing of his best friend's parent.

Somewhere, in another world, a creature was born, one that shouldn't have ever existed, and time fractured and splintered.

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**April 16th, 2013**

**9:33 PM**

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**I'm really sorry about the lack of updates. I was preoccupied with tests and stuff, but here is chapter two! Please tell me if there are any mistakes. I'm in a rush and might not get to write for some time, so this was barely edited.**


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